Australian Broadcasting Corporation plans to call California for Obama before polls close

November 7, 2012 Around 9:40am (Wednesday) Sydney time and 2:40pm (Tuesday) California time, on (of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), a reporter covering the United States election said the network would call California for Barack Obama before the polls closed.

The reporter went on to explain that the media in the United States avoids doing this so as not to affect voter turnout, but as they are reporting in Australia, this is not a local concern and they are not concerned about making predictions about race results.

Going into the elections, Obama was already forecast to win in California, with predicting he would win by 14 points. ABC OTUS had also predicted Obama would win the state.

Predicting election results before actual returns has been a problem historically, such as when Florida was called for Al Gore before all the votes had been counted.